De l’inconvénient d’être né: Selections

I. Introduction

The passages below are aphorisms from what is probably Emil Cioran’s best-known work, De l’inconvénient d’être né (Gallimard, 1973). Aphorisms have advantages for a person working at learning to read French: They are short but complete in themselves, hence are unlikely to fatigue or frustrate the student; in addition, good ones are striking formulations of what at least the author thinks are general truths, and consequently (or so I hope) easier for the student to hold in the memory. Cioran’s aphorisms tend towards the bleak and are sometimes shocking, which can also (taken in the right spirit) help to make them memorable. (I am not of course endorsing what he says, other than as expressions of a certain mood we are all liable to.)

III. The Text Glossed

(Title:) De l’inconvénient d’être né

inconvénient – There is no *convénient in French, only the negative form inconvénient, and it does not mean quite the same as our English “inconvenient.” It is a noun, to begin with (a substantivized adjective, actually), and can mean “inconvenience” in the sense of “negative aspect or consequence (of something that may also have positive aspects)”–in other words a disadvantage. It is very commonly used in the following phrase:

Si vous n’y voyez pas d’inconvénient = “If you have no objection”; literally, “If you don’t see any disadvantage (= negative aspect or consequence) in what I propose.”

For English “inconvenient” and “inconvenience,” French incommode, incommodité are the best match.

être né – The compound (or past, or perfect) infinitive of the verb naître, which, being a House of Being verb, is conjugated with être.

vaut – Present indicative 3rd person singular of the fairly irregular valoir. Some people (I am not one of them) call it a semi-auxiliaire, since it is so often used (as here) with a dependent infinitive. It’s basic meaning is: “to be worth.” It is used in a non-auxiliary way here:

Ça ne vaut pas la peine (de…) = “It isn’t worth the trouble (to…)”

For an alternate way to say the same thing, see no. 6.

animal qu’homme, insecte qu’animal, plante qu’insecte – Why no articles (especially given the French language’s insistence on articles)? Because, after the verb être, a noun referring to a category can be assimilated to an adjective. As in:

Le salut – un/le salut can be: 1) “a salute”; 2) occasionally, “safety” or “security” (le salut public); 3) an informal way of saying “Hi!” or “Goodbye!” But its most important use for you is likely to be: 4) “salvation” = rescue from destruction (whether physical or moral/spiritual).

À bien considérer – This is a kind of conditional infinitive construction; see the translation below.

dits – The past participle of dire, and so theoretically “said” or “spoken,” but here is best translated as “so-called.”

il n’en est aucun – 1) Il est is a more elegant alternative for the more standard Il y a(There is / There are). 2) The en is standing in for de nos actes dits généreux. 3) If you’re shaky on the negative adjectif aucun go here.

moindre – The adjective form corresponding to the comparative adverb moins; it means “lesser.” Since it is here used with the determiner la, it has the force of a superlative. (See if needed the Language topic Synthetic Comparative Forms.)

où – où here is a relative adverb, not an interrogative adverb, and “where” is possibly not the best way to translate it. I recommend thinking of the first où as “into which” and the subsequent d’où as “from which.”

au plus grand – The comparative plus is preceded by the definite article le (contracted in au), so that the adjective grand is here in the superlative degree.

dam – This is a highly literary word, which you will mostly see in the phrase au grand dam de…(to the great harm of…). From Latin damnum.

lésé – Past participle of léser, ultimately from Latin lædolædĕre(to wound). The French word léser means “to cause serious injury” to a person’s interests or (in a medical context) body. One also finds it in the following phrase:

un crime de lèse-majesté = “a crime of high treason” (i.e., an attack on the sovereign)

y échapper – The verb échapper is completed with a prepositional phrase introduced by à (to be translated as: “from”). The y here is standing in for au temps. (But there is also the pronominal s’échapper, completed by de…)

au-dessus de – Take the preposition sur (for which the -sus here is a variant), stick a de in front of it, and you have the adverb dessus. Stick au in front of that and add de after, and you have a preposition once again.

au-dessus is pronounced [odsy] (that is, [odᵊsy]).

devenir – The infinitive is here used as a noun.

le verbe – often means the same as our English “verb,” but in some contexts it has the more general meaning of Latin verbum, “word,” as here:

2 It is better to be an animal than a human bean, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so forth.Salvation?7 Anything8 that reduces the reign of consciousness and compromises its supremacy.

4 When you consider carefully our so-called “generous” acts, there is not a single one that is not, in some respect, blameworthy and even harmful, of a nature to inspire us with regret for having performed it, such that our only choice, in the final analysis, is between abstention and remorse.

5 The explosive force of the least9 mortification. Every desire, (once) overcome, makes powerful. One has all the more grip on this world as10 one withdraws from it, as one does not adhere to it. Renunciation confers an infinite power.

10 The more one is injured by time, the more one wants to escape it. To write one page without a fault, to write just a sentence, raises you above becoming and its corruptions. One transcends death by means of the search for the indestructible through language, through the very symbol of caducity.

Une puce also means “a chip” of the kind you find in computers and credit cards.↩